Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello met with the local media Thursday afternoon before the Vols open up their three-game series with Vanderbilt at Lindsey Nelson Stadium Friday night.
It’s the fourth straight series against a top five team for Tennessee and the end of the month gauntlet. It hasn’t been a fun month for the Vols as they’ve posted a 2-7 record the last three weekends and have an uphill battle to make the NCAA Tournament.
Vitello updated the status of a handful of injured players, shared his pitching plan for the weekend and talked about what stands out about the Commodores. Here’s everything Vitello said.
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On if he anticipates having Christian Moore and Maui Ahuna available
“I think so. I think you’re at the time of year where no one is a 100 percent, but then how far depleted do you get. It’s hard to grade out that percentage, but neither one of those guys will be sniffing that area. They’re both very competitive. I think with the rest of the team, they’ll do whatever they can to contribute this weekend and so, we’ll figure that out tomorrow, but I like the odds of them doing something for us.”
On the injury Moore is dealing with
“Some sort of foot injury where putting weight on that or pressure is kind of sensitive right now, so better to have it in a boot and relieve that so you’re not compounding the situation. Then eventually you’re going to have to play with some pain if you’re going to play.”
On the plan for the pitching rotation this weekend
“Yeah, we’ll go with the rotation that we went with last week. I think it’ll be a little more comfortable for (Andrew) Lindsey to get out there and not necessarily start, because he’s done that before and he wanted to be in that position, but to give you a full allotment of pitches. Obviously we would have liked to play a little bit better defense or maybe he would have liked to make a better pitch or something like that, but it looked like for a while there it might be a deal where you’ve got to rip the ball out of the guy’s hand. He’s saying, ‘I can go, I can go,’ and as a coaching staff, you’ve got to have a little bit of restraint there on the pitch count, but I think that’s kind of gone out the window now that this will be the second time around.
“And then two, maybe the other two guys (Chase Dollander and Drew Beam) are aided in preparation by — they kind of had an idea that that’s what they would do, but I’m sure with the conversations about our team and trying to either do this or that, there was a lot of chatter, and maybe that chatter gets drowned out this weekend. Each of those guys knows what day they’re throwing and they prepare the way they want and go out there and compete the way they’re capable of.”
On how Chase Burns is adjusting to his new role out of the bullpen
“I think starting with last year if you remember in particular, Kentucky was on fire in the SEC Tournament and he and Beam basically kind of split the game and he came out of the bullpen and threw really well for us. And did so on other occasions, too. I think he’s handled it well. I think it’s brought a little bit of sense of relaxation to him whether it be outside influences, maybe even us, maybe himself putting extra pressure on himself to be perfect because his stuff is so good. Probably led him down a little bit of a path he didn’t want to go and so, to have a chance to reset — not really a timeout because he threw a pretty good amount of pitches for us last week. Just to have a little change of scenery and almost kind of start the second half with a new narrative to it was probably a positive for him. He’s been more relaxed then I’ve scene and also hard to argue that he didn’t throw the ball as well as he’s thrown this year down there in Fayetteville, over in Fayetteville, whatever you say.”
On if Chase Burns could pitch multiple times out of the bullpen this weekend
“Last week I made a comment, once it got to game two we were probably looking at a one shot deal, since it was his first day out of the bullpen. We will see how he feels today and hat day he wants to be available on. We will have a conversation with him. I think because he is so well conditioned – one thing we did up there to start the year, a conditioning challenge at the football indoor – he blew everybody out of the water. So, the guy has gone to great lengths to take very good care of himself and his arm. I think if two times is needed, he would be up to the task.”
On the challenge for Maui Ahuna to balance playing through pain
“You don’t want to go two steps forward and one step back. I think with what he’s kind of dealing with, there’s a good chance that those will go away. Picking when you want to go full speed, taking extra care when it relates to mobility or warm up stuff – these days these guys do all kinds of things. I don’t even know what the exercises are compared to what we did back in the day. I guess I can say back in the day now. Just having a plan, really. Having a plan and then on game day if you’re going to put yourself out there, you’ve got to put in the back of your mind and compete. I think we also have to have realistic expectations that there might be one or two things that pop up that he would normally do, but again, can’t necessarily do in those situations.”
On if Tennessee treated Andrew Lindsey like an opener or starter last weekend
“I think the deal with Halvy [Seth Halvorsen] – he’s been really good too as being a guy who just wants the ball. We didn’t expect him to throw two innings this past Tuesday, but the game kind of got quirky. I take more responsibility than anyone for that. Knowing he’s [Andrew Lindsey] available on a Friday like he will be this Friday and last weekend against Arkansas, You know he can go out there and give you maybe four or five innings. To ride out a guy for five or six innings just because he’s the starter doesn’t make sense if it’s not going well. For Lindsey, we could have kept him in the game, but because we thought they’d bunt in that situation, and it was a left-handed hitter – two left-handed hitters in a row or maybe a switchy – we felt good about the matchup with Kirby [Connell]. Maybe if Lindsey was a better outfielder, we could have pulled the [Zach] Joyce move and pulled Kirby and put him back out there. If you look at him, he’s real physical and is a reliever who could throw all three days for us. But now he is starting, so his arm is built up the way it needs to be to pitch as long as he and we see fit.”
On balancing the lineup ahead of facing a lefty heavy pitching staff
“I think all year long we’ve kind of been toying with what’s the best order and also the best group and part of that is who’s healthiest and guys go through different parts of the year where they’re maybe swinging it better than they did or not as well as before. But we’re kind of at the end of the year where you have to just do it. That goes for the coaching staff as well. We’ll go with the guys that we think are the best guys regardless. Maybe there’s a spot in the order where you do go a little more specific to the matchup but our guys need to understand that very pitcher regardless of what arm he’s throwing with— I think we’ve even got a guy in the league that throws with both— there’s a way to attack each guy and step one is being the best version of you and step two in this league or any league where you see great arms— having the wherewithal to understand there’s a way to approach this particular pitcher on the mound, so I think that proceeds or takes precedent, I should say, over all of that.”
On if there’s a sense of pressure of needing wins to make the postseason
“I think the pressure is to play with our best personality and best attitude. That needs to be defined by our and when I say our I mean, it’s the time of year where they (players) need to decide as much as the coaches and of course we have to do our job but what’s our best personality and how do we want to approach things, you know what I’m saying? The thing to me that’s exciting if you want to look at league play, if you want to go off where we’re at in the schedule Tuesday wasn’t so good but if you want to get excited, get excited about the fact that there’s just as many weekends left in the SEC as we have played. Fortunately we start all that off, and by that I mean the second half, here at home and Lindsey Nelson Stadium and I think there’s a little bit of drizzle for Saturday but otherwise I don’t see any weather that would discourage people from coming out and being rowdy.”
On the trouble of finding a select number of guys when production has varied
“I think that comes with youth. I’ve seen teams before that are really young at the start of the year. There’s just one that sticks out of my mind where there were five freshmen. This was like 15 years ago; it wasn’t a program I was part of. And you saw that team in the Big 12 Tournament, they were a totally different team, not because of different personnel but because of repetitions and lessons learned added up. So, we do have some guys with experience, but there’s a lot of guys that have not started a full year, or played a full year, of college baseball, much less SEC baseball. So, you’d like to think as experience tallies up and reps add up, the play will improve as well.”
On the Vanderbilt series
“My biggest level of excitement is, you got the second half of the season in the league, and kind of the old ‘How do you eat a big ‘ole steak?’ Or an elephant? Which, I don’t know why anyone would eat an elephant, maybe people do eat elephant… one bite at a time. Let’s focus on the game that’s here Friday. Normally, you look at stuff maybe with an extra narrative. Again with this group, make a decision on what you want your personality and attitude to be, and it needs to revolve around the program’s strength and history and things like that. But it also needs to adhere to, who are the personalities that are currently in the locker room and that will take the ball on Friday or be in the lineup on Friday. That, to me, is the bigger theme, and if you ask most of these SEC teams, my first year in the league was obviously with Arkansas. It was like, ‘Who’s the rivalry?’ And there wasn’t one. Or if you ask, everyone has a bunch of different questions. These guys are as close as Kentucky, I think, by proximity. They’re obviously in our state, though, but it’s a private school, and everyone in the league has been trying to beat them in recruiting for the last 20 years for a variety of reasons. All those things are present, but I don’t think they necessarily change what we’re trying to do in our locker room or what they’re trying to do, either.”
